The web can be a very scary place for your kids, especially, if you were not behind them to guide and teach. There are many topics out there that you definitely do NOT want them to be exposed to. There’s bad language, porn, violence and many other topics. The problem is that the web is full of this stuff and you simply can’t avoid them but at least you know how to handle them. The kids on the other hand don’t, so you have to find a way to prevent your kids from being exposed to them.

In the last couple days, I’ve been looking for information about safe browsers (kids browsers) and I found many browsers out there that will help you do this job very easy. One of the browsers that I thought was really cool is called “BuddyBrowser” I found that by using this browser you can let your kids play on the computer and leave them alone. It’s a really great browser. So, if you’re a parent who’s concerned about his/her kids and want to make sure they will not see something that they’re not supposed to see. I strangely suggest you give it a try.

We’ve released Smart Bro v2.7 with games support. Yes, you heared it right. Now we integrated a games sidebar into the browser. This will make accessing online games very easy to you. So whenever you’re feeling bored, or just looking for a little fun, you can start the game of your preference from there.

We’re very excited about this and we hope you’ll be as much excited as we’re. If your Smart Bro browser didn’t prompt you for update, it will do that in a moment. Have fun!

Smart Bro v2.6 (Build#11) is released! The new build contains 3 important enhancements:

1. Closing Tab crash is fixed: In some rare situations, closing a specific website can crash Smart Bro. With this new fix, this problem is gone!

2. Script Error messages problem was solved: We received many emails complaining that Smart Bro is unable to suppress script errors correctly (Menu->Content->Suppress Script Errors). The problem is fixed now. All what you have to do is to make sure that the options (Menu->Content->Suppress Loading Errors & Menu->Content->Suppress Script Errors) are checked and we’ll take it from there.

3. New search engines are added to our quick search: Well, we’ve added the Live.com and Wikipedia.org which is not actually a search engine, but it will definitely help you do your research faster using Smart Bro.

That’s it for today, Now the latest and coolest Smart Bro is v2.6.0011, so if you don’t have this version, please download it from here!

I’ve been thinking of writing a post on how to protect yourself, as a web surfer, and the steps you can take to make sure no one will be able to know what sites you’ve been visiting on the net. I had the chance today to sit and write this article, so here it is:

1. Clean history when you finish: The history of a web browser can be invaluable resource to know what a person was surfing on the net. Anyone can simply open a browser after you finish browsing the net and show the list of the websites that you’ve been visiting. This can have a very bad impact on you. Imagine for instance, that you’ve been searching for a job on a specific website and some colleague was able to access this website to learn that you’re searching for a job. It can be very annoying when you discover that your secrets are exposed by some nosy guy.

While this can be very annoying and can put you in serious trouble sometimes, the solution is very simple. You can clean your web-browser history every time you finish browsing the web. Or better, you can set your browser to clean your history when closing (if the browser supports this feature). In Smart Bro, you can simply do that by enabling the auto-history cleaner which works every time you close Smart Bro and cleans all your traces.

2. Make sure no one can access your browser: leaving your machine on and unlocked can invite some people to sit on your desk and see what programs you’re running and what websites you’re surfing. In many situations, you’ll have to leave your machine quickly to handle an urgent matter. It’s a very good habit to lock your machine before leaving because this will prevent others from accessing your computer while you’re away. On Windows XP, you can use Ctrl+K to lock your machine quickly. In case you don’t want to do that, you can activate your browser protection (if available). Some browsers provide a feature that’s call “Boss Key” which hides the whole browser by pressing a single shortcut. In Smart Bro however, you can enable protection by just minimizing Smart Bro to the system tray. Now if another person tried to open Smart Bro, he’ll be asked to provide a password to enable him to see the browser content.

3. Avoid spyware: spyware is a piece of software that will install itself on your machine with one single goal, that’s is, collecting information about you and sending it back to its creators. The spyware is getting very hard to control these days, but installing a reliable anti-spyware software may help you minimize your risk to the minimum. A very important rule to keep in mind is that whenever a website asks you to install something then handle this with caution and ask yourself if you absolutely need this to be done and whether this is a reliable website or not. If the answer is no, reject the request.

4. Be aware of your bookmarks: be careful with what you add to your bookmark list. Some people will bookmark some websites without thinking about the fact that some person may take a look at their list of bookmarks (favorites). When a person does that, it’s the same as leaving his history on the machine which will give the sneaky guy a chance to read it. Some websites these days offer online book marking (like Yahoo!). You can use that to prevent this problem. This method will guarantee that you have your list of bookmarks with you where ever you go. You can also use protected favorites. Smart Bro allows you to add a bookmark group and set a password to enable it to open. So you can bookmark your websites and keep the links protected from being seen by others.

I hope these tips will help you protect your privacy from being exposed.

We’re glad to announce the release of Smart Bro v2.6. The new version of Smart Bro has received many enhancements that we hope you will like.

we added in this release:

1. Notification support: A notification window will show up when some specific events occur. For example, when there’s a new Smart Bro blog post, the notification window will come up with the new content.

2. Mouse gestures: We added support for mouse gestures in this version. To learn more about mouse gestures please read our previous post.

3. We added skin support for the splash screen.

4. Saving state problems are fixed: We fixed the bug of the rebar band in the main screen not being able to save its state upon closing.

5. We fixed the bug of maximize/minimize/restore status.

6. We fixed a bug that caused the rss reader to duplicate a headline that was already retrieved.

We’re sure that you will like the new features that were added to Smart Bro. If you want to download Smart Bro, please go here.

I read an article about some of the problem in the new IE7, so enjoy …

>>

Putting aside specific issues (compatibility, printing, installation, etc)
noted by others, is my experience of the following typical – and is this the
way it is supposed to be? [on my HP Pavilion notebook, 3GHz HT Pentium, 1GB
RAM…]

Speed: pages seem to load more slowly than before. I know that the phishing
filter might be implicated in this, but surely checking and reporting on
phishing status should be independent of the presentation of the website
itself? (Load the page as fast as possible, and only when phishing search
complete update the icon). As to the effect of add-ins on speed… it was all
fine with IE6.

Responsiveness: Tabbed browsing seems rather pointless (apart from having a
single window) when one cannot work effectively with tabs because IE7 is
unresponsive while loading, e.g after a Ctrl-click on a link (to open a new
background tab) I am unable to click again until the new page has loaded! It
doesn’t seem that IE7 is multithreaded properly (or at all?). I am better off
with different browser windows because they all respond to events
independently.

Utility: principles of tabbed browsing, “Quick Tabs” etc. OK, but frequently
clicked items are favorites, file save as, etc. are on the LHS but tools,
home etc. is all on the right hand side on a toolbar that cannot be moved.
I’ve turned on the menu bar, that helps a bit, but this is typical of MS –
not merely providing a perceived “improvement” but not allowing me to work
differently if I happen to disagree.

Specific Functionality: I am annoyed that the security info no longer seems
to report on the encryption level: in IE6 I saw sites such as PayPal claiming
to use 128 encryption, but the report said only 40-bit (which I consider
woefully inadequate). I want to know how secure the security is…

Like many others I am reluctant to accept the risk of an uninstall to IE6,
so… if my experience is not atypical, when is IE 7.01 due?

Today, I’m posting to you an article about mouse gestures. This feature which is available in some web browsers. I hope you will enjoy reading it…

In computing, a mouse gesture is a way of combining computer mouse movements and clicks which the software recognizes as a specific command. Mouse gestures can provide quick access to common functions of a program. They can also be useful for people who have difficulties typing on a keyboard. For example, in a web browser, the user could navigate to the previously viewed page by pressing the right mouse button, moving the mouse briefly to the left, then releasing the button.

The first mouse gesture, the “drag,” was introduced by Apple to replace a dedicated “move” button on mice shipped with its Macintosh and Lisa computers. Dragging involves holding down a mouse button while moving the mouse; the software interprets this as an action distinct from separate clicking and moving behaviors. Although this behavior has been adopted in a huge variety of software packages, few other gestures have been as successful. As of 2005, most programs do not support gestures other than the drag operation. Each program that recognizes mouse gestures does so in its own way, sometimes allowing for very short mouse movement distances to be recognized as gestures, and sometimes requiring very precise emulation of a certain movement pattern (e.g. circle). Some implementations allow users to customize these factors.

The Opera web browser has recognized mouse gestures since version 5.11 (April 2001). Several mouse gesture extensions are also available for the Mozilla Firefox browser, such as the Optimoz Mouse Gestures extension that offer also Rocker gestures performed by pressing one mouse button while holding down the other (this offers two additional commands, usually moving forward/backward). These extensions use almost identical gestures as Opera.

We’ve just released a new build of Smart Bro. Build #12 has received a very important fix for the RSS reader functionality.

Description:
In many cases we noticed that Smart Bro RSS reader doesn’t detect new RSS entries at the correct time. In some cases a gap of 1 day between the post and the detection of the new entry. In this build we fixed this problem.